The iron giants strode beside her. The clang of their footsteps on the shale of the building site was like war drums.
III
A CROWN OF TOWERS, A KING OF CRANES
I remember the first stories Gutterglass ever told me about my mother. Glas was a woman at the time, and she had her rats stretch her lap out for me, and we lay back on the side of a mountain of tin cans, condoms and mulch. Glas always found the grandeur of the landfill comforting; it was easier to talk about the good old days there, without the sour milk spilling from her shells.
That smell of decay still makes me think of home.
Glas rocked me to and fro, and although I pretended scandalised pride, I secretly loved every second.
‘Your mother,’ she began, ‘is an incredible thing …’
I’d never been able to remember my mother; I’d barely even been aware I was missing one. But I knew this was important. I stopped feeding congealed special fried rice to her rats and listened, and I discovered that my mother was that most incredible thing: a Goddess. I also learned that out of all the things she was, being
my mother
was by far the least important.
But even with that momentous revelation I got bored
and I wriggled out of Glas’ lap and set to work building a castle out of old paint tins. I really didn’t understand.
But later …
Our memories are like a city: we tear some structures down, and we use rubble of the old to raise up new ones. Some memories are bright glass, blindingly beautiful when they catch the sun, but then there are the darker days, when they reflect only the crumbling walls of their derelict neighbours. Some memories are buried under years of patient construction; their echoing halls may never again be seen or walked down, but still they are the foundations for everything that stands above them.
Glas told me once that that’s what people
are
, mostly: memories, the memories in their own heads, and the memories of them in other people’s. And if memories are like a city, and we are our memories, then
we
are like cities too. I’ve always taken comfort from that.
A decade ago, a six-year-old boy raced a glowing-glass girl through the warm brick warrens of the Lots Road Power Station, and if you’d asked him then, he’d’ve said, ‘
’course
I’ve met my mother.’
If you could get him to stop showing off for the horrified lightbulb girl by swimming in the station’s water tanks, if you could get him to tear his eyes away from the spectacle of her plugging herself into the mains and glowing as bright as a tiny sun, and if you could get the inarticulate little squit to shape the words, he’d tell you
all about
his mother.
‘Are you blind?’ he’d say; ‘are you daft? She’s there. Right there—’
—with him and Electra as they dared each other to do ever more suicidally stupid things for the honour of their genders (never mind their species). He’d tell you how he and his mother had fought side by side against the cranes; how they’d lassoed the moon and dragged it into the sky, leaving it hanging there like an old tyre on a rope. He’d remind you how when she sang it made the river still, and that once she’d baked him a tarmac cake
this
big (he’d extend his short-arse six-year-old arms to maximum stretch) and he’d eaten all of it – of course he had, were you calling him a
girl
?
He’d tell you all of this, and it would be true, for him, because he
remembered
it. He’d built the glass buildings in his mind. And it was a long time before he could tell the difference between these fantasies and the older, deeper truths they reflected.
Once, when I was a lot older and I’d all but forgotten all those almost-memories I’d imagined, I thought I was finally about to meet Mater Viae for
real
.
I was in an alley in the Old Kent Road, and a dustbin fell over and a stray cat darted out and for no reason I can now fathom I thought,
It’s Fleet
. I was
certain
that any minute now cats would spill from the shadows in a purring, hissing, flea-bitten flood.
And then I’ll see her, and then I’ll finally know …
But the letters on the street sign stayed the same, no matter how hard I stared at them, and although I waited until long after the lone furball found some tiny, scrabbling morsel to chase, no other cats followed it. A fox did, and a drug dealer who didn’t see me, and a couple of his customers who were too high to care who watched while they screwed against the wall, but no more cats.
And you know what? More than anything else, I felt relieved – because all my fantasies, all those
almost
-memories, they were safe.
That’s worth something.
‘Do you think you could at least
admit
you have no idea what you’re doing?’ Ezekiel asks. He doesn’t make the effort to change his overface’s expression, but although the stone mouth is still singing a hosanna, I can see the disdainful curl of his lip beneath.
‘I’m quite serious,’ he repeats, ‘because if you persist in pretending you know how to lead an army while handing out idiotic instructions, I’m going to have to tell my boys their Goddess’ child is an imbecile. It’d be a blow to morale, but I’d take that over the risk of any of them actually
listening
to you.’
We’re on the Embankment, on the north side of Chelsea Bridge. Ezekiel’s got himself a plinth on the corner outside the Royal Hospital Gardens. The graceless bulk of the old Victorian infirmary looms over us; it’s under heavy repair and I watch the scaffolding surrounding its brick skin nervously, but nothing moves. It’s probably normal, lifeless steel, but all scaff makes me nervous these days.
Calm down, Filius
, I urge myself, trying to give Ezekiel my
full attention. ‘What’s so stupid about the idea?’ I ask in what I think is a very reasonable tone.
‘That’s a stupid question.’
My remaining patience hisses out in one exasperated breath. ‘Look,’ I snap, ‘we have to find a way to keep the element of surprise, and when you’ve got a hundred tons of ambulant bloody
rock
on the move, that is easier said than done. All I suggested was since we have to march at night because of the Lampfolk, you stoneskins should make like empty statues: you all shuffle up from one plinth to the next until we get where we’re going and Reach’ll be none the wiser.’
I’m actually quite proud of the idea, but I can almost hear Ezekiel’s eyebrows grazing the inside of his punishment skin as they climb his face.
The tone of his voice could wither lichen. ‘First of all, we are
Pavement Priests
. We are the honour guard of the Street Goddess; we do
not
skulk and we do not sneak and we most certainly do not
shuffle
.
‘Second, do you have any notion of how
hard
it is to move a punishment skin? That’s why they’re
called
punishment skins, Highness. If you want us to have any energy left to fight with, we need to go by the most direct route possible, not “shuffle” from plinth to plinth, zigzagging across the city until we can’t even lift our own limbs.
‘And thirdly, you did
not
“just suggest” it, you said it in front of my men, who are both soldiers and clerics: they take a “suggestion” like that from a deity – which, sadly
for all of us, is what you are – as an
order
. An order which in effect means they are to kill themselves by the most exhausting and humiliating means possible – oh, and incidentally, to hand almost certain victory to the enemy.
‘I had to tell them you were joking, so now they think the son of their Goddess has a sick sense of humour, but that’s better than them realising that he’s either a gibbering idiot or, very possibly, insane.’
‘Look, mate—’ I start, but he cuts me off scornfully.
‘I am
not
your mate. I am either your mother’s obedient servant, and therefore bound, reluctantly, to serve you too, or else I am the man who will put his limestone gauntlet through your chops for being the annoying little maggot who’s interfering in the running of my order. Either way,
mate
doesn’t really cover it.’
I’m
this
close to chinning him – if he thinks he can take me, I’m more than happy to educate him. ‘Fine,’ I hiss, ‘but
why
are you suddenly so hostile? Gutterglass said you agreed that I could lead ’em with you—’
Ezekiel freezes. Being a statue, he was pretty still anyway, and now he’s even stiller. And that, take it from me, is pretty bloody scarily still.
‘That’s one way to put it.’ He spits the words out between clenched teeth.
‘Oh? And what’s another way?’
‘Another way would be to say that Gutterglass raised it. I laughed at it. Then I realised he was serious and I argued for two solid hours, at the end of which he threatened to
give my body back to the Chemical Synod and to ensure that I spend my next incarnation inside an abstract sculpture with holes in all the most uncomfortable places. At which point, yes, I suppose you could say I “agreed” you could lead them with me.’
‘Oh.’ I had been proud of that, too, imagining myself fierce at the head of a battalion of stone warriors. Now I can feel that pride swan-diving towards my bowels.
‘Gutterglass wants you visible.’ Disgust sours the stone angel’s voice. ‘He wants us reminded who we’re fighting for. Frankly I think a stuffed cat and a scarecrow would be a better symbol for Our Lady’s terrible beauty than you, but sadly, you’re what we have.’
A creaking of stone drowns out any attempt at self-justification. His vast grey wings extend either side of him, cloaking me in shadow. ‘If she wants to us to be inspired, then she should come and inspire us herself.’ I can hear the bitter complaint in his voice. ‘I need
real
advantages, not symbolic ones. I need Fleet’s war party, I need the Great Fire, the only weapon our foe has ever really feared.’ He exhales wearily. ‘And I need a rest. We’re going into battle against the
Crane King
, for Thames’ sake—
‘I need a God. And instead I have you.’ He shakes his heavy stone head and flaps laboriously away.
An army was gathering in Battersea Park. Streetlamps flickered beside the river and white light rippled along the road to Chelsea Bridge as bright spirits filled empty bulbs. The Blankleits flexed their fields and chattered in excited flashes. A few had fused together peaked caps from glass, semblances of military uniform and now they threw each other badly executed salutes. The Russian in the ragged coat leaned against a lamppost and drank, shaking his head at their enthusiasm.
Gutterglass had been busy too. Foxes and feral dogs yipped and barked and play-fought on the grass. They’d bounded with canine obedience after the Pylon Spiders who’d come by their bins, interrupting their scavenging with stories of a hunt to be joined. Deep in the park’s wooded thickets, far from the white lamps of the shore, glowing amber figures practised their war-waltzes, building their charges with slow turns. Shockwaves uprooted trees and twisted the fallen leaves into whirling vortices. All one hundred and eleven Sodiumite families were called, and most came,
but of Electra and her sisters there was no word. Rumour fluttered through the ranks that Filius Viae was biting his blackened nails at their absence.
Pavement Priests moved through the throng, giving benediction in the name of the Lady of the Streets. Their steps were painstakingly slow; they were hoarding their energy for the battles to come.
And, sitting on park a bench, facing the Thames, Beth was pouring the prince of this little war party a cup of good, strong tea.
‘These’ – he sprayed crumbs over the half-empty packet of HobNobs resting on his lap – ‘are amazing.’
‘You should try the chocolate ones.’ Beth said. ‘They’ll blow you away.’
‘There are
chocolate
ones?’ he said in an awestruck voice.
She laughed. ‘You have much to learn, Grasshopper.’
‘Grasshopper?’
‘It’s a kind of insect.’
‘I know what a grasshopper
is
, Beth, I just don’t know why you’d call me one. I’m at least two legs short for one thing, and I can’t jump like they do, I mean, I
wish
but—’
‘Fil, it’s just a—’ Beth interrupted, but the odds against him being familiar with
Kung-Fu
were astronomical. She sighed. ‘Never mind.’
Steam whistled from the kettle and she smiled her thanks to the Blankleit whose lap was heating it (she couldn’t pronounce his name, so she’d nicknamed him ‘Steve’). She
poured water into the two chipped Mr Men mugs she’d dug out of a skip. She counted to ninety in her head, fished out the teabags, added milk and handed one to Fil.
Who stared at it.
‘What am I supposed to do with that?’
‘You drink it.’
He squinted at the liquid suspiciously, and then took a large gulp.
Beth smiled and sipped her tea while Fil doubled up coughing and spluttering. ‘
Ow
,’ he wheezed hoarsely.
‘Hot?’
‘It’s
scalding
! People actually drink this? Voluntarily? That’s
barbaric
.’
‘We usually let it cool down a bit first.’ She reached across and lifted a HobNob from the packet on his lap. ‘So what you’re saying,’ she said, returning to their previous conversation, ‘is that we’re totally boned.’ She made sure that her face was turned away from Steve so he couldn’t read her lips.
‘I didn’t say that at all,’ he protested. ‘It’s simple: all we have to do is get this little lot’ – he jerked a thumb at the variegated horde in the park behind him – ‘across that bridge, east into the City to Blackfriars. Get ’em formed up and then march on St Paul’s without ol’ Rubbleface noticing it.’
‘Yeah,’ Beth dunked her HobNob, ‘but the Whities and the Amberglows will be trying to rip each other’s throats out as soon as they get within a hundred yards of each
other. I can’t imagine that will attract any attention. And the Pavement Priests are determined to charge on Reach with flags waving and a bloody fanfare.
And
I have no idea how to control the dogs. Remind me what happens if Reach’s forces catch us in the open?’